Our Birthright

            As children of the Infinite Soul 
            Our Birthright is the boundless whole, 
Won truth by truth while endless ages roll.

            Swift Fancy’s wing would flag in flight 
            To reach the depth, the breadth, and height 
Of the vast wealth that waits our growing sight:

            High truths which have not yet been dreamed, 
            Realities of all that seemed 
Best in the best of what we hoped and deemed :

            Such freedom under natural law 
            As not the fabled Eden saw, 
So large and calm, and full of blissful awe :

            And love that cannot fail to flow, 
            Warm as the sun and white as snow, 
Through flesh and soul that sweet as lilies grow:

            With knowledge that on sea and land 
            And air shall lay familiar hand, 
And weigh the star-dust on creation’s strand ;

            And wisdom ever more divine, 
            Of clustered knowledge the red wine, 
Which holds the world dissolved and crystalline.

            Peace over all in skyey calm 
            Shall weave her olive with the palm 
Of victory, and steep the earth in balm.

            A thousand years the soul shall climb 
            To guess what more of wealth sublime 
Waits for a conqueror in the depths of time.

            The fiends who guard it, hunger-gnawed, 
            Are Doubt and Fear and ancient Fraud, 
And grey old Use by whom the world is awed.

            But heralds of the better day 
            Beckon us on, and point the way, 
Where earnest seeking never goes astray.

            No peril daunts the Brave; he speeds 
            Across the wreck of older creeds, 
And crownless gods cast down among the weeds.

            Doubt dies beneath his lifted spear, 
            Fraud slinks away with breathless Fear, 
And grey old Use shrieks in his heedless ear.

            Wide gape these parasites aghast 
            As in the temples of the Past 
He sets the ark of living Godhood fast ;

            And hollow gods, to whom they pledge 
            Libations on their altar-ledge, 
Fall shattered down to bite the grunsel’s edge.

            Well may ye deem that pain and loss 
            Will haunt his walks, and murder toss 
On him the boding shadow of her cross.

            But loss and pain will wear away 
            The thick opacity of clay, 
And the cross lift him to the zone of day !

            Far-seeking his imperial goal,
            No fate can rob the earnest soul 
Of his great birthright in the boundless whole!